On My Way Home: One Woman's Journey in Search of the Unknown God

By Deborah Armin

Shows the importance of the gift of a Bible, how God will search out his 'lost sheep', and how an abusive relationship can be restored.

A spiritually-aware child is brought up with no guidance except for a children's Bible. Sexual abuse by her father leads to further abusive relationships. She moves to America to work as a nanny and the downward spiral continues. Despite other spiritual influences, she becomes more aware of God's call on her life.

After returning to the UK Deborah gained a degree in Theology from the LST, helped her father turn to Christ and, in so doing, restored their relationship.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Authentic Media
• Release date: Apr 3, 2015
• ISBN: 9781780782676

Deborah Armin

Deborah grew up in South Africa and Kuwait, before returning to England as a teenager when her parents separated. While working in America she became suicidal, met the Lord and promised to help others in the same situations she had faced.

Book preview

Epilogue

Prologue

It was the year 2000, but it felt to me as if the Twin Towers had already come down. Not literal towers, you understand, but the structures I had built in my heart.

I had given my heart to ‘Mr Charming’ but that had ended. And with it the tower of love had imploded.

To make matters worse, things had deteriorated between my best friend and me. She had disapproved of my relationship with Mr Charming and I had disapproved of her relationship with a married man because it had stirred painful memories about what my dad had done. Things had never been the same between us after that. Something had broken and it felt as if the tower of friendship had come falling down too.

As I sat in my living room in Florida, I realized that I was now very much alone. I had only recently moved to the ‘Sunshine State’ and the new friends I had made were busy with their own challenges, and I didn’t want to bother them. I knew from my own experience that to burden friends too soon with your problems was the kiss of death. When you’re up, new friends love you. When you’re down, they run like panicked crowds.

In any case, I was sick of hearing myself talking about all the same old issues.

And I didn’t want to listen again to the same old clichés and platitudes thrown like stones at me:

‘There’s plenty more fish in the sea.’

‘Maybe a hobby or another little job would help.’

That last comment had really bruised me. As if my job as a professional massage therapist didn’t count!

So I really was alone. There was no escaping it.

My old friends were too dispersed and distant geographically.

My family were thousands of miles away in England.

I had never felt so desolate.

Tears were falling down my cheeks.

My heart felt as if it was being suffocated under heavy rocks and thoughts were tumbling like debris into my head.

‘You’re a loser!’

‘You’re alone.’

‘You’re trash.’

I sat on my sofa, hunched over my lap, trying to take cover, desperately seeking shelter from the emotional devastation all around me.

I didn’t know what to do or where to turn.

All I needed was a hug from someone I trusted. Just a hug and the words, ‘It’s going to be OK, Deborah.’ But there was nothing.

Just silence.

The sun had gone in.

My apartment felt empty.

I was falling down.

Falling …

Falling …

Falling …

And I couldn’t stop.

There was only one thing for it – a huge dose of sleeping pills, like I’d considered before. Only this time, I would make sure I did it properly. This time my sleep would be permanent.

But I didn’t move from the chair.

No sooner had I made the decision than something – or someone – stopped me. I never even stood to go and fetch the tablets. It was as if I was glued to my sofa and all I could think about was the indescribable agony my suicide would cause to my family and friends.

In an attempt to take my mind off all this, I reached for the remote and switched on the TV. I landed on the God channel where a lady called Joyce Meyer was teaching from the Bible and inviting people to say what she called ‘the sinner’s prayer’.

I had nowhere else to turn.

There was nothing to lose by praying.

I stumbled vaguely through the words but my mind was full of turmoil.

I opened up my Bible – the very one Mr Charming had bought for me the previous Christmas – and tried to read, but my eyes were so full of tears it was difficult.

I put the Bible down and cried out.

‘If you’re really real then I need you to come to me right now! I need you to show up for me because if you don’t I’m going to end it all. I can’t take any more. I feel destroyed.’

As I said that, I hit bottom.

I felt desperate.

I was at ground zero.

Part I

Leaving Home

1

Age of Innocence

Given that for many years I have been on a spiritual journey, it’s fitting that I was apparently conceived near Stonehenge, a place that’s always been a magnet for mystics, travellers and spiritual seekers.

Nine months later I was born in Portsmouth. The year was 1965, so now you know my age. It was 5.30 p.m. and I arrived just in time for tea, or so my mum jokingly says. I quickly became fond of tea as a toddler – so fond, in fact, that I earned the nickname ‘Puddles’ on account of the small pools I left everywhere around the house.

Dad was at that time stationed at a naval base near Stonehenge and spent a long time away from home. My mum was left for extended stretches to cope with three children under the age of 10. It was tough for her.

As I grew up, I remember Mum saying that I had been ‘a surprise’ and that she’d tried to stop her pregnancy by drinking gin and vigorously cycling up a hill – though not at the same time, presumably. Later she would say to me, ‘Well, at least I didn’t have an abortion.’

These comments didn’t exactly make me feel as though my arrival had been celebrated, or that my life had been welcomed.

I forgave my mum a long time ago because I came to understand the immense pressures she had been facing, not least the fact that she was effectively bringing up her children as a single parent.

But the words still hurt.

And they left a legacy of rejection and insecurity.

Mum did her very best with precious few resources. She had little help except occasional support from my Nan. We moved often, but she always somehow managed to keep the new house clean and tidy and there was always food on the table. She created a warm home wherever we went.

I’ll always be grateful to her for that.

As for Dad, he wasn’t around a lot, but whenever he was he gave mixed signals. On the one hand he was adventurous and the source of fun. On the other he was strict and critical, and his behaviour was often scary.

‘Do you want to be as stupid as your brother?’ he would say, as he used to correct my homework.

To this day he corrects me on my spelling or my choice of words, although now I get my own back by correcting his as well.

‘Touché, Da!’ I’ll say with a smirk when I catch him out.

From early on I had this hunch that there is far more to life than can be seen. This intuition grew particularly strong in times of emotional turmoil and family stress. At those times I felt that something or someone was watching over me, but I had no idea what or who. Since my parents weren’t religious, I had no framework for understanding this sixth sense, no language for it, either.

But I wanted to know.

When I was 4 years old, we moved to a semi-detached house in Somerton in Somerset. It had three bedrooms and Mum kept it meticulously clean. Dad refurbished the kitchen in pine wood. I remember watching Dr Who with him. There was a long garden behind the house with a stream at the bottom. I played for long hours there.

I am sure I had been having dreams for a long time but now, in Somerton, I began to remember some of them. Most of them were not very pleasant; they tended to be about people trying to kidnap and kill me.

One dream in particular stood out. It was about someone trying to murder me using bleach. My mum used bleach a lot when cleaning the house.

When I woke up the smell of bleach was still in my nostrils and my throat felt sore.

Some might be tempted to say that it was simply my mum’s cleaning products that brought this on. But it felt as if there was more to it than that. It seemed significant to me.

As did other dreams, especially ones in which I was being kidnapped. Where had they come from? And what did they all mean?

Neither my mum nor my dad appeared to be spiritual people, so there was no religious talk in our home. We didn’t discuss phenomena such as dreams and yet I knew instinctively that they were important.

Only much later did mum start saying that she had psychic abilities. She also started referring to astrological star signs, saying ‘You’re a typical …’ or ‘that’s so typical of a …’

She would study the stars in popular magazines and newspapers and read out my star signs to me – something which would later fuel my interest in astrology.

At 4 years of age, however, all this was in the future.

I was ignorant about such things.

And when it came to the knowledge of good and evil, I was still innocent.

But that was about to change.

2

Close Calls

It was in my fifth year that I first became aware that I was living in a dangerous world.

We had just moved to South Africa. Dad had retired from his job in the navy and was now employed by South African Airways. We had moved roughly once a year in my first five years and were now living on another continent. Looking back over my life, I’ve worked out that so far I have moved sixty-five times in under fifty years.

When we arrived in South Africa we initially moved into an apartment in a block of flats which surrounded a communal garden and a swimming pool. It was sunny and very warm and the garden was full of flowers.

Our apartment had two doors – a front door which was the main entrance and exit and a back door which led to the stairwell and the fire escape.

One day when I was out playing on the stairwell an older boy tried to get me on my own.

‘Hi, I’ve made a present for you,’ he said. ‘Do you want to come with me?’

I followed him into a neighbouring flat where he gave me a flower ring.

Then he tried to kiss me.

I fled.

I didn’t see him again but the experience frightened me. I had felt the presence of something evil for the first time in my life.

I didn’t go out the back door into the stairwell for another week. When I did eventually venture out, a dark-haired white man started following me.

He was my dad’s age, about mid-thirties. He spoke to me in Afrikaans but I didn’t understand. I knew he wasn’t safe, however, so I ran back upstairs into the shelter of our flat.

Not long afterwards, Mum found out that a paedophile was in the block and had been arrested. She told me not to talk to strangers any more.

Many years later I would look back on this incident and realize that something or someone must have been watching over me, because I felt sure that the man who’d talked to me had been the same person who was arrested. I had had a close brush with evil and the thought of that sent a shiver down my spine. In fact, from that time on I was constantly aware that evil might be lurking not far away and that danger was just around the corner.

And it was.

Remember I said that there was a communal pool?

One day I was swimming with a friend of the family who offered to give me a piggyback across the pool. All of a sudden she was seized with cramp and she dropped me. I sank straight to the bottom. I hadn’t learnt to swim yet and I began to gulp water. I tried to breathe, but of course all I did was take in more water. It was most surreal – as if I was out of my body watching myself sink.

The next thing I knew, someone was grabbing hold of me from behind and bringing me back up to the surface.

‘That was a close call,’ I heard someone say.

As I lay beside the pool coughing up water, I sensed something watching over me. In all the chaos, there was this strong, protective presence.

In fact, from a very young age I became constantly aware of two forces – a threatening, sinister power intent on harming me, and a watchful, overshadowing presence equally intent on protecting me.

It was during this brief spell of living in the block of flats that I started attending Sunday school for the first time. I don’t remember much, I have to confess, but I do have a vague memory of hearing about this man called Jesus. Since we moved quickly after that, I only attended a couple of times so I heard no more about him.

The place we lived in next was a bungalow. It had a garden which I loved playing in. I became convinced that there were fairies living among the flowers. Once again I was captivated and enchanted by things unseen. Even though this was a subject my parents never talked about, I just knew that there was an invisible, spiritual world all around me – just a gossamer thread away.

Inside the bungalow it seemed dark and foreboding. I didn’t like it at all and never felt secure there. I always felt as if there was a shadow following me.

The garden outside was my green zone. It was a bright, warm and safe place. There was so much to fascinate me, including a chameleon on the grapevine. I had never seen one before. I spent hours looking at it.

I wasn’t fascinated by these things for long, though. Very soon we were on the move again, to another bungalow which my parents had now bought.

If I had felt unsafe in the previous place, however, this new one was to be no better.

3

Reign of Terror

From a child’s point of view, your father is your protector, your defender, your guard and your guide. He is the one who makes you feel secure, honoured and special. He is your knight and your hero. Even if the hordes of hell were to try to storm the doors of your house, you would feel safe, provided your father was standing in their way.

Once we moved to our new bungalow, I sadly began to realize that my father was not like this. It is hard to speak about these things because so much good has happened in our relationship since then and I really want to honour him. But at this time, when I was little and vulnerable, my father’s behaviour was sometimes confusing.

To put it delicately, it was at this stage in my life that I started receiving mixed messages from him, especially in the realms of affection. These happened sporadically but they left their mark on me.

Dad used to take showers and baths with me and it was at these times that there was inappropriate behaviour.

All I wanted was my dad’s love and approval. All I got was a dark and distorted expression of those things. I don’t want to go into any more detail except to say this: these overtures of ‘love’ left me feeling very ashamed and defenceless.

Later on in my life, the legacy was, I’m afraid, destructive. I came to believe the lie that this was a normal way for a woman to receive love. When boys and men began to exploit me sexually, I mistook this for what true love is.

It would take a long time before I found healing from these old wounds.

The new bungalow was therefore not a safe place. Dad was absent a lot because of his work. When he was home he was not always affectionate in an appropriate way. He was not affirming of me either.

This hurt.

Looking back, I